« Dancers are captors of reality, they seize a part of the world, and  translate it for us in their bodies and through their dances. They have  developed amazing capacities to register and store the memory of  movement and imagination. Throughout my years as dancer/choreographer, I  have had the opportunity to actively observe dancers attempting to  understand their mechanisms of perception, their strategies of approach,  and their incredible capacities to mimic.

This project is articulated around what the dancers of this company possess in common, a shared repertory that is, part of the heritage of dance history. How, from this starting place, do we allow the subjective and creative side of each individual to emerge? What does a performer do to re-live their role, what do they tell themselves in order to re-activate a choreography, what fiction do they invent for themselves? What is that unnamed part alongside a  set choreography? At the Ballet de Lorraine, some of the dancers hold  more than fifty roles in pieces that are for the most part of a  contemporary nature.

The repertory, their repertory, is part of their story as performers,  and is of the utmost wealth. It is upon this material that I reflected,  and articulated this creation.

What do dancers say to  themselves when they dance for the umpteenth time a repertory piece? We  must enter into the minds and the imaginations of the dancers. We must  read in their bodies this incredible voyage of the poetics of dance.  This creation is a tribute to the dancers, to their strength, to their  creative power.» 

Mathilde Monnier

Mathilde Monnier occupies a place of reference in the landscape of  French and international contemporary dance. From piece to piece, she  thwarts expectations by presenting work in constant renewal.

Her  appointment as head of the Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon  Choreographic Center in 1994 marked the beginning of a series of  collaborations with personalities from various artistic fields (Jean-Luc  Nancy, Katerine, Christine Angot, La Ribot, Heiner Goebbels.. .).

She  created more than 50 choreographic pieces presented on major  international stages like the Avignon Festival, the Théâtre de la Ville  in Paris, passing through New York, Vienna, Berlin, London and receiving  several prizes for her work (Ministry of Culture prize, SACD Grand  Prize).

After directing the CND National Dance Center in Paris,  Mathilde Monnier resumed her creative work in 2019 with several pieces  like Please Please Please (2019) which she created in collaboration with  La Ribot & Tiago Rodiguez, Records (2021) and her latest, Black  Lights (2023).

Since 2020, Mathilde Monnier and her company have residing at the Halle Tropisme in Montpellier.

Source and more information: https://www.mathildemonnier.com/en/

From live stage images to life in images, the  director and video artist Karim Zeriahen seems to have found the  shortest way. Since the beginning of the 90s, when he worked in close  relationship with choreographer Philippe Decouflé, he learned how to put  the art of stage in motion, contemporary dance most of the time. Karim  Zeriahen then starts a fruitful collaboration with Montpellier based  choreographer Mathilde Monnier. Stop, Videlilah, day of night, short  films adapted from her stage creations. Each time, Karim Zeriahen's   camera takes over the place with movement, the body language is not  frozen but magnified. Choreographer Herman Diephuis also joins this  gallery of dancing portraits. Documentaries on figures such like Albert  Maysles or Hubert de Givenchy and from Joe Dalessandro to Paul  Morrissey, he sets a signature, a camera always in action with  confidence.

Today the director goes further with a new  project and tracks the subtle movements of the body language beyond the  physical appearance. A collection of living portraits as unique pièces  reminding us of the master portraitists of renaissance. These living  natures consists in filming the subject in a certain amount of time,  almost still, with signs of respiration, eye blinks, as if it were  posing for a painting. They are then displayed on a flat screen with a  memory card. With this collection starting, Karim Zeriahen, with his  documentary and artist vision, interrogates himself about the virtual  world filled with images. By taking a pause, and his models with him, he  questions the way we look at things, the way we look at life.

Source: Philippe Noisette 

En savoir plus: www.karimzeriahen.com

Since acquiring the CCN title in 1999, the Centre Chorégraphique National - Ballet de Lorraine has dedicated itself to supporting contemporary choreographic creation. As of July 2011 the organization is under the general and artistic direction of Petter Jacobsson.
The CCN – Ballet de Lorraine and its company of 26 dancers is one of the most important companies working in Europe, performing contemporary creations while retaining and programming a rich and extensive repertory, spanning our modern history, made up of works by some of our generations most highly regarded choreographers.
The CCN functions as an art center and venue for multiple possibilities in the fields of research, experimentation and artistic creation. It is a platform open to many different disciplines, a space where the many visions of dance of today may meet. 

More information : http://ballet-de-lorraine.eu